Bauxite couldn't help gasping for air as they woke up back at the campsite. They didn't know what actually killed them that time around; Gossan mentioned that an average sized Hearthian could last 1 to 2 minutes in space without a suit. The sun looked like it was ready to blow up before that mark, but they lost consciousness before they saw it go, so it was hard to tell exactly what got them.
It was good information to have though, it meant they didn't have to be awake when the supernova happened to come back here.
Bauxite got up from their sleeping bag, giving Slate a brief wave before punching in the launch codes. They looked like they wanted to say something, but Baux was gone before they could speak up.
After the introduction to alien spacecraft controls they gave last time, Bauxite doubted they'd need Slate's help this time around. The last two ships were pretty similar, what were the odds the next one would be all that different?
Bauxite's assumption proved true as they stepped off the launch elevator. The ship was slightly taller than last time, but otherwise it looked to be about the same. The fuel tank looked identical, the fins were the same, the engine had all the components that Slate said meant it was liquid-fueled, there was just an extra small white... something between the cockpit and the fuel tank.
For Bauxite, all that really meant was the climb up to the cockpit hatch would be a bit longer than normal.
They slid into their seat, and booted up the terminal. It had another stream of alien text, followed by that same red and blue logo.
With all the systems slowly coming online, Bauxite was left with some time to think. What did they actually hope to accomplish by strapping themself into an alien spaceship? Their space suit vanished with their original ship, so even if this thing could steer outside of the atmosphere, it wasn't like they could go anywhere.
Well, they could fly around Timber Hearth at least. But Bauxite's been exploring this planet since they were a hatchling, the odds of finding something new that could shed some light on this situation weren't all that great.
They let out a sigh, closing their eyes and resting inside the surprisingly comfortable cockpit.
Was there anything they could really do? This was the actual sun blowing up every 20 minutes, how could a single Hearthian do anything about that? Didn't matter if it was the fault of the Nomai statue or these aliens or the Stars themselves conspiring to destroy Timber Hearth.
Mid-mental spiral, they subconsciously turned on the ignition. The sound of the engine firing up was surprisingly calming. Maybe they couldn't control the fate of the sun, but seeing an entire alien vessel bending to Bauxite's will wasn't that bad a consolation prize.
They pushed the throttle forward, letting the rocket lift off. Before long they pushed the flight stick down, arcing themself to stay within the atmosphere. Sure, the villagers might get a little freaked out, but it wouldn't matter in 15 minutes anyways.
As they flew, they noticed one of the indicators to their right— a mechanical gauge, rising up and down as Bauxite gained and lost altitude. Right next to it was a digital readout, maybe an altitude gauge?
They idly watched the alien numbers rise and fall. Each digit changed 8 times before the next digit changed; so they must use base 8?
Both the Hearthians and the Nomai both used base 6, weird that they'd use something else. Maybe they had 8 fingers? Or 8 unique limbs?
Ugh, they wished they could talk to Hal about this, they'd have all sorts of theories about how the alien's biology contributed to their linguistic structure.
Well, there was nothing stopping Bauxite from dragging them to the launch pad next time around, but with only 20 minutes to answer all the questions they'd inevitably have, probably wouldn't get to anything actually useful.
So they canned the idea. Back to focusing on the flight.
The fuel gauges looked about 3/4ths empty by this point— these things did not have nearly as much capacity as Slate's ship. Probably would have to figure out a way to land soon.
Or did they? The first time around the parachute deployed automatically, maybe all they had to do was make sure it didn't crash on the village.
They watched the video feed as they completed another lap around Timber Hearth. Probably time to get ready for the landing.
They throttled down, pulling the flight stick left to redirect their momentum. With no retrothrusters, their best bet was to bleed velocity using air resistance.
The plan worked, the rocket slowing down as it veered to the left. The altitude meter seemed to agree, the needle descending down towards the blue baseline.
That was uh… getting a little close. Shouldn't the parachute have deployed by now?
Bauxite switched back to the downwards camera, and the quantum grove was getting really close- wait parachute wasn't going to-
Bauxite didn't have the time to finish that thought, as the rocket crashed into the quantum crater. Gabbro's carefully crafted poem was incinerated in a quantum blaze, the fire burning at all points simultaneously. And with Bauxite immediately dying on impact, there was no one to collapse the possibilities.
Had there been a conscious observer, they would have found it fascinating.
—
"Fucking-"
Bauxite cut themself off, as they realized they were not strapped into an alien rocket, but instead back at the campfire across from Slate. At least the sleeping bag hid the way their body spasmed.
Slate shot them an unamused glare. "…I know it's tradition to sleep out under the stars the night before a launch, but if you ask me it makes you all a bit jumpy."
Bauxite tuned out Slate and shut their eyes for a few moments, gathering themself. That crash definitely killed them well before the supernova hit, but they still woke back up here.
It was mostly a relief, it meant they were practically immortal! A smaller part of them was terrified though, that there may not have a way out of this.
Finally, Bauxite reopened their eyes and got up. Still ignoring Slate, they walked to the launch elevator, before hesitating.
Just because they were immortal didn't mean that constantly strapping themself into the alien rocket was the solution. Walking around Timber Hearth could reveal just as much about their situation as checking out the rocket.
"Hey, you still need to get the flight codes from Hornfels-"
Nevermind, spiting Slate was worth it. Bauxite punched in the codes, and rose up to the top of the launchpad.
After the past few time loops, Bauxite had some expectation of what the alien space ship would have in store for them. Engine of some sort, fuel tank, fins, cockpit, the works.
This was not what they were expecting.
Sitting still on the launchpad was just the cockpit, with the hatch propped open. No parachute, no rocket, no fuel, nothing.
They cautiously approached the open hatch and looked inside. Almost all the buttons and switches they've started the process of getting used to were covered in duct tape, with only some controls around the main terminal exposed.
Putting aside the fact that these aliens had also had something that looked extremely similar to duct tape, it was clear this was way different than everything else Bauxite has seen so far.
The fact that the hatch came already open was a good enough sign, so they stepped inside.
The button to turn on the terminal had several arrows drawn in marker pointing towards it. Were… the aliens trying to walk them through what to do?
One way to find out. They pressed the power button.
There was no rapidly scrolling lines of unintelligible code this time, it instead cut straight to that red and blue logo, lingering there for a few moments. A couple notes played, sounding almost like a harmonica but uncomfortably steady, like whoever was behind it never needed to breathe.
Thankfully, those notes started giving way to an actual melody. It still sounded artificial, but this was an actual song! Bauxite couldn't recognize the instruments at all, it was a weird mix of whistling, what had to be some string instrument, and a much more harsh drumline than anything Chert's ever done, but without any doubt it was music.
The red logo faded to black, the screen lingering on a blank screen for another few moments as the music quieted down. Bauxite quickly realized it was a video feed, as the camera rotated away from the black background.
Immediately, they saw what appeared to be a massive room— probably half the size of the entire village. Rigid steel seemed to line the walls in a grid with the occasional column going from the floor to the ceiling. Probably how they kept the roof from crashing in on a building as gigantic as this.
It was an odd thing to look at. In terms of scale, it certainly rivaled the Nomai. If Riebeck's reports of the Hanging City were to be believed, it had to be a similar size to that. But the Nomai were immaculate; even with years of decay their ruins still felt polished. These aliens were...
Bauxite didn't want to say 'rough' since it's hardly fair to judge another culture like that. But it lacked both that clean polish of the Nomai or the down-to-Hearth feel of the Hearthian's cobbled-together cabins and outfits.
Industrial was the word they were looking for. Countless mechanical components haphazardly scattered about the area, too precisely designed to be Hearthian but too messy to be Nomai.
Well that wasn't entirely true. It looked very similar to one place on Timber Hearth: Slate's shack. Piles of various... things scattered about the building floor. More steel beams, sheets of some metal, they noticed what appeared to just be a pile of cockpit modules, just like the one they were sitting in now.
Bauxite found the building oddly comforting.
Then, in the background, they saw motion. A green figure, barely visible at this resolution, walked into the frame carrying a metal tank of something in one hand and a hose with a weird nozzle mechanism at the end in the other. They were wearing a mask just like Slate's which made it difficult to make out anything about the alien's face, but they could at least see the body.
They appeared to be bipedal with two arms, just like the Hearthians, but that was where the differences fell apart. Their limbs were much stockier, Bauxite couldn't see any ears on them, and they seemed to walk around with their knees heavily bent.
They were only in the frame for a few moments though. A voice close to the camera but out of frame yelled out in an alien tongue marked by clicking and chirping. In response, the alien in the background turned their head, lingering for a few moments before quickly scampering out of frame as well.
The unseen alien made a sound that sounded almost like coughing, before walking in from the left of the frame.
Unlike the first one, this one didn't wear any mask or headgear in general, letting Bauxite get their first full view of this alien species. Immediately their mind jumped to the crickets that lived scattered about Timber Hearth. It definitely looked like the species was derived from an insect of some sort— their skin appeared harder and more uniform than scales would have any right to be, their head had antennas sticking out, and rather than the normal four eyes most life on Timber Hearth had, this species only had two, though either one was larger than even the Nomai's third eye.
The alien raised an arm, and the comparison immediately clicked. They looked like a mantis.
Though that wasn't entirely fair. For all those characteristics, these aliens were still a far cry from an insect; they stood tall and proud rather than hunched over. Though the fact that they were missing one or two eyes was concerning, they still had a recognizable face and mouth.
This wasn't some monster Feldspar would tell an intricate story of how they deftly escaped its clutches— this was someone who could sit around that same campfire and join in on the story.
Well, language barrier notwithstanding. And with the way the alien in the video started speaking, Bauxite assumed that would be a very big issue.
The sound was surprisingly smooth compared to the clicks and chirps from earlier. Granted, they seemed to be speaking much slower as well, so maybe it was just something they were doing for Bauxite's sake.
After going through what was presumably a greeting of some sort, the alien pointed an arm towards themself, speaking slowly.
"Aurum. Are-rum."
They were definitely describing something about themself. Was it a name? Or maybe the name of the species?
What would Rutile lead with if they had to deal with a first contact? Probably name first, then species.
Bauxite's theory was vindicated as several other aliens joined the first. Aurum stepped forward, gesturing towards all the gathered aliens with a sweeping motion.
"Alarian. Ah-lair-ee-an. Alarian."
Alarian. That's what they called themselves. Was nice to hear it from the aliens themself rather than just assign them a name like they had to do with the Nomai.
The other Alarians walked out of the frame, leaving just Aurum once again. From the right side of the screen, a blackboard was wheeled in, with-
That was a picture of Bauxite. It was an image of Bauxite sitting inside of the cockpit, like they were right now. In it, Bauxite was hunched over the controls and grabbing the flight stick. The viewport was black, which meant it was either taken at night or while they were in space. But they didn't go to space this time around...
Aurum continued, the recording ignorant of Bauxite's minor freakout. They pointed to the photo, then to the camera. They knew Bauxite would be the one watching this.
The camera switched to a plain white background, before crude drawings of the Alarians populated the screen. Beneath them, a circle with a needle pointing out from the center started spinning— it almost looked like a timer, what were the odds aliens engineered the same design for a timer?
The animated Alarians whirred around the screen, building up a rocket that looked similar to the last couple Bauxite flew as the timer ticked down. When the needle made a full rotation, a black orb appeared on screen, sucking in the space ship. Not long after, the entire sequence played in a sped-up reverse, until the rocket was completely disassembled, and the Alarians were standing where they were at the start of the animation.
The display split down the middle, with the drawn Alarians being shoved off to the left and the other having a drawing of… Bauxite. They definitely got quite a few details wrong even with this simplified style, but they made sure to exaggerate the ears and four-eyes.
The timer started ticking down again, as the Alarians built up a new, slightly different spaceship. Meanwhile the previous one they built was shot out of a white orb in the Hearthian side of the animation, as fake-Bauxite climbed up and took off in their ship.
When the timer hit zero again, both the new Alarian ship and the one Bauxite was flying were sucked into black orbs. The rewind played again, and when the loop restarted, the new ship the Alarians built was dumped onto Bauxite's launchpad, like last time. But for the Alarians, the ship Bauxite just flew was spit out of that white orb. Now, while half of them worked on building up the new ship, the others went to work on examining the one Bauxite flew.
Bauxite sat, dumbfounded. The animation looped a few more times, giving them time to process this.
Obviously, they knew that the ships changed every loop, so it made some logical sense they weren't the only one caught up in this. But the fact that they were sharing this special kind of hell with a team full of aliens almost as large as the village was absolutely bizarre. And that's to say nothing of the logistics of all this; somehow the ships they build just appear on the launchpad here in Timber Hearth every time.
…Was that where their original spaceship went? Rotting away in that giant Alarian building?
The animation ended, forcing Bauxite to focus back on the video stream. It was back to Aurum, in front of the same blackboard. This time, instead of a slightly off-putting photo of Bauxite, it was the Alarian's logo next to an image of the Outer Wilds Ventures patch.
Aurum pointed to the camera, then to the two logos. Using a piece of chalk, they made a crude drawing of a timer, then drew two arrows pointing from the logos to it. With a very dramatic motion, they made a giant X through the timer, before turning back to the camera.
The buttons around the bottom portion of the screen lit up, as two animated icons appeared above them. Both displayed the timer, with the first just showing it constantly ticking down and rewinding. The second showed the timer shattering into pieces.
They were asking if Bauxite wanted to stay in this… loop, they supposed they could call it. Did that mean they really were behind it after all? Or were they just asking if they wanted to be caught up in this?
…It was a little odd. Did they really want to end this? Not being able to exist for more than 20 minutes at a time definitely had it's issues, but they were also literally immortal. They could take as much time as they wanted figuring out how to fly these ships, and explore the solar system without caring about death at all.
Well, there was another concern that took much greater precedence. They looked out through the viewport- while they couldn't see the sun directly, the red glow of Timber Hearth's atmosphere gave them a good idea of what was going on with the sun.
Is the loop connected to the supernova? If they pulled the plug, would their world just end?
They looked back to the video feed, which was paused as it waited for Bauxite's input.
The Alarians were intelligent, and didn't seem to have any ill will towards Bauxite. They could probably handle a more complex answer than yes or no.
They stepped out of the cockpit, taking the elevator down. Slate was still tending to the campfire, not too disturbed by the red sky above them.
"Getting cold feet?" They teased, poking the campfire to get the optimal roast on their marshmallow. "Maybe you'll actually get the launch codes from Hornfels instead of just taking off?"
"Do you have your blueprints on you?" Bauxite asked, not wanting to deal with the launch code conversation again.
"'Course. What you need them for?"
"Need to borrow them, and could use a pen."
That actually managed to get Slate to pull their attention from the marshmallow. "Since when did you care about space engineering?"
"Since the world started ending, now can I see them?"
Slate looked up, and shrugged. "Honestly thought I was just seeing things. Sure, why not."
They passed over a blue scroll from a pocket on their left, before reaching in and fishing out a pen.
Just as Bauxite thought they were safe, Slate rose to their feet.
"Can you at least let me know what you plan on doing to my fine piece of engineering first?"
Judging by the shape of the sun right about now, there wouldn't be much time to both humor Slate and communicate everything to the Alarians they wanted to. That was fine, just have to distract them with a shiny toy.
They grabbed Slate's arm, and dragged them to the launch elevator. They didn't offer any resistance, equal parts shocked and curious to see what's gotten into Bauxite.
As Slate got up to the launch pad, they were immediately captivated by the Alarian cockpit.
"So this is what's been going on," they muttered, walking up to the small capsule.
"Give me a bit to finish something, then I'll walk you through everything I know." That lie felt terrible to Bauxite, the sun would give before they'd be able to answer any other questions, but had to do what they had to do.
Slate gave a stunned nod, as Bauxite slid back inside.
They got to drawing immediately, trying to make sure it was as understandable as possible. The Alarians seemed to be using a timer as a symbol for the loop, so Bauxite can stick with that.
They started with the timer hitting zero, followed by an arrow with a crude sketch of the solar system. Following that, the same solar system but this time with the sun going supernova.
Now the tricky part. They made a sketch of a Hearthian head, with all four eyes replaced with X's. Would they understand that meant dead?
Though if the aliens got photos of Bauxite, they probably also would've seen the supernova at the end of the last couple loops. An alien species smart enough to assemble these types of rockets could probably piece together that a supernova wouldn't be that kind on the people living close to it.
Whatever, there wasn't enough time to second-guess. They held up the drawn-over blueprint to where they assumed the camera would be.
They got a little over a minute of holding it up before the sky outside went dark. Bauxite set down the blueprint, and stepped back out to see Slate.
The engineer was looking up at the sky, as a flash of blue lit up the launchpad.
"You knew, didn't you?" They asked, not pulling their eyes from the pending supernova.
No point hiding now. "…Yeah, it's complicated."
"Huh."
Slate didn't have the time to get another word in before the supernova incinerated both of them.
A/N: Wow, mantis people, wonder what that could mean. Well we'll probably find out, since the next chapter will be an intermission.
Also, sorry for being a day off, I decided to be lazy last week. Should be back to Fridays for the next upload.